Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Powerpoint has a well-earned reputation for being accessories to some truly awful speeches. And even though I have had access to Powerpoint software for years, I honestly cannot remember using it. But this time around, I thought the situation appropriate mostly because I have points I can really only make with illustrations and pictures.

So I call the folks at Plymouth Congregational Church to find out what sort of setup I would be facing. Yes there is a projector for your Powerpoint presentation and it needs a VGA hook-up. Naturally, I panicked. In the world of Apple, I have not seen a VGA hookup since the 90s and I could not find any adaptor on-line that would fit any computer in the house, that I could use to get to VGA. Besides, I had a couple of high-def movie clips I wanted to embed in my presentation and some pictures with important details. VGA projectors are usually 800 x 600 resolution. Ugh!

I called a friend who arranged to borrow a medium definition projector that at least had a digital input. But now I needed to see the room in case they are set up with a ceiling mount or some other problem with showing up with your own equipment.

So at 2:00 pm. today, I am waiting to see the Jackman Room in the biggest and most prosperous Congregational Church in Minnesota. After satisfying myself that I could quite easily set up a projector I brought myself, I requested to see the big meeting hall. The Puritans were never into ornamentation but this church does a fine job of dressing up the structural features like the roof trusses—which are really lovely examples of the woodworker's art. The Scandinavians and Germans may dominate Minnesota culture but make no mistake, the Puritans still pretty much own things. And they take very good care of their meeting house. I was overwhelmed by the notion that I was at ground zero where they put the "P" in WASP.